


Shift

by rageprufrock



Series: Earthside [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-15
Updated: 2013-07-15
Packaged: 2017-12-20 08:01:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/884897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rageprufrock/pseuds/rageprufrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>princess.sheppardina (gmail) : thanks a lot, mckay. now they think you're my girlfriend. (This is the abandoned, unfinished sequel to Share.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shift

Their first day back, long before John unpacked any of his SGC-provided office supplies or downloaded the monstrously-huge patches his computer apparently needs immediately—”But I just turned it on,” John said helplessly; “Doesn’t matter, sir. It’s Tuesday,” his assistant had said grimly—he got an email from Rodney. It said: 

To: Lt. Col. John Sheppard  
From: Dr. Rodney McKay, Ph.D (x3) 

In about 20 minutes, I’m going to hack your computer. Do not panic.

Rodney. 

John stared at it for a long time before he glanced at the time stamp and then glanced at his wall clock. He sighed and leaned back in his desk chair, listening to it squeak in protest just as the mouse on his monitor started to move of its own volition.

The first thing Rodney did was open a text editor through the command line and type:

OH MY GOD. YOU ARE SO STUPID. THEY STILL MAKE YOU RUN WINDOWS? 

John rolled his eyes and debated whether or not it’d be worth it to call Rodney and yell at him or if talking through two whole mediums would be entirely too 14-year-old girls, so he just snapped his wrist over the mouse and followed up Rodney with: 

i’ve been at my desk for like, 30 minutes. i promise that right after we kill the evil aliens, setting up ubuntu will be my next priority. cross my heart and hope to die. 

Rodney made a noise of broken irritation over the screen—WELKRJSF OH MY GOD SHIFT, SHIFT SHIFT—and then spent about an hour fucking around with John’s computer, downloading and running the updates, downloading software and hacking his way through the security restrictions.

Tech support, live and bitchy, John thought to himself, laughing and unpacking a box of files, sorting them away into his new file cabinets and glancing over his shoulder every few minutes to see that Rodney’s phantom presence was still moving around his computer screen, files and windows popping up and scrolling. It was perfectly silent, a ghostly afterimage, a half-picture of something he’d seen so frequently on Atlantis he could almost see Rodney hunched over a console, scowling as his fingers flew across the keyboards.

Then, just as John had tucked a stapler into his left hand desk drawer, a messenger window popped up.

rodney.mckay (gmail) : Congratulations, you no longer have a hobbled, broken machine.

John stared at it for a moment before cracking his knuckles and typing into his own side of the window, more than a little frightened by whatever username Rodney had picked for him. On Atlantis, the default usernames were first name, middle initial, last name, followed by a number or randomly assigned letter if yours was a particularly popular sequence. Because Rodney had been the most singularly hateful temporary sysadmin in the history of time, he’d created editorial aliases for all of his so-called friends. BleedingHeart for Elizabeth, LovesSheep for Carson, CaptainKirk for John.

princess.sheppardina (gmail) : no, instead i have one littered with programs and language i don’t know how to use.  
princess.sheppardina (gmail): RODNEY.  
rodney.mckay (gmail) : WHAT? I swear all the other usernames were taken!  
princess.sheppardina (gmail): you are SO FULL OF SHIT!  
rodney.mckay (gmail) : At least this proves you can use capital letters.  
princess.sheppardina (gmail) : go to hell.  
rodney.mckay (gmail) : Oh, like I’ve never heard that before. 

John rolled his eyes and snapped the laptop shut with a click and shoved away from the desk

He had pencils and pens and a computer and had been issued a footlocker and all sorts of mid-level codes. But he didn’t have a self-destruct code, he didn’t have keys to the joint, and when he touched the walls, they didn’t touch him back. 

John had never been so far away from the sky as he was here, miles underground at Stargate Command, and he closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to the closed door of his office and counted to ten in Ancient, thinking of his city—their city now—and how she might be glowing, with her people back, how she might shine at night.

*

It took him more than a week to remember how to use light switches, doors, keys.

He could always identify the occasional Atlantis refugee from their expressions of blank concern, standing in front of a doorway or another, their key cards handing from round their necks but waiting for the doors to understand them, to sense them, to say hello, and open with a sweet, inviting whoosh.

Lights, John admitted, were probably something only he struggled with. He hadn’t been the only carrier of the ATA gene, especially after Carson’s treatment, but he’d gone native the most quickly, and even as others had taken to using the light consoles in their rooms John had just thought it brighter or dimmer, warm or cool shades.

It wasn’t just the novelty of controlling a city with his mind—sometimes he thought she was lonely, with all those residents and nobody talking to her. So John spent most of his free time babbling at Atlantis in a language understood by only two. In absent brushes of his hand, in the way he’d searched through her secret hallways, admired her lush, outward view of the ocean, and how he’d sometimes liked to sit on the balcony at her highest spire, to lie flat and feel her heart beat with his own.

* 

“Oh thank God,” Rodney says when John picks up, says hello, “I thought I was going to die on this line waiting for somebody who wasn’t a recording to answer.”

Rodney held out longer than John anticipated he would, but he does call, and with an under-the-skin tension that makes John wish he was near enough to cuff Rodney on the back of the head, because saying, “Hey, it’ll be okay, buddy,” might sound kind of gay without a near-drowning to justify it.

So he just leans back in his seat, kicks his feet up on his desk—heels on a pile of acquisition forms—looks to his left and wonders what the weather is like until he remembers suddenly he no longer has a window—that he’s underground.

“It’s part of the Air Force’s tactical defense,” he tells Rodney, feeling his shoulders go loose and his throat go tight. The odd stillness beneath his feet is Earth, and not the sweet, slow rock of Atlantis on the sea, and it makes something in his stomach roll with reverse motion sickness.

Rodney huffs over the line. “Well, it’s ingeniously cruel. In case you’re wondering about the constant droning in the background—” John can’t hear any droning at all; he doesn’t know if anybody ever told Rodney, but his voice fills all the space in the phone call, usually fills all the empty spaces in a room “—its’ the sound of my very own turbine, generating my very own electricity for my very own very important experiments.”

John laughs because Rodney is Rodney is Rodney, and he will never change. He shifts in his seat, pulls his new SGC-issued cell phone out of his pocket—it’s a Blackberry Pearl, which just means that his emails can follow him wherever he goes—and tosses it across his desk. On Atlantis, he and Rodney had agreed that their accidental discovery of the city-wide text-message system was the most dangerous thing ever and made a blood pact never to tell what they had found.

“So,” he says, and his own syllables sound awkward in his mouth without the crackle of radio static. He doesn’t think he’s ever talked to Rodney on a landline before this moment. “You’re settling in okay?”

“Of course,” Rodney snaps at him, because John thinks that if Rodney can convince himself, it might convince them both. “All of my lab assistants like me, you know.”

John rolls his eyes. “It’ll pass.”

The Blackberry buzzes across the desk and John curses under his breath when he sees SMOOTH TRANSITION?? in the subject line, and when he blinks and refocuses, Rodney is squawking in his ear, “What, what?”

John closes his eyes and flips the Blackberry over: he doesn’t want to think about giving tips to the Ancients who’d left Atlantis; he doesn’t want to be a diplomat, their friend, an ambassador. Before stepping through the gate that last time, standing in the gateroom watching Atlantis glow blue and green and heartbroken, her murmuring whispers clinging, he’d thought about staying—or at least keeping Rodney, taking Teyla and Ronon with him to Colorado. But Rodney deserves Area 51 and his enormous lab and his enormous turbine and Teyla and Ronon would never abandon Pegasus and John maybe was always meant to be by himself.

“Nothing,” John says, because telling Rodney when he’s upset is tantamount to inviting the cavalry to ride to the rescue—Rodney always wants to save him and sometimes, it’s more than John can stand to watch Rodney put himself out there like that: eyes big and mouth slack and heartbroken. “It’s fine.” 

There’s a long moment before Rodney says, “Um. Have they assigned you a team yet?”

John thinks about his new team, and he can’t help but laugh. “You’ll love this,” he tells Rodney. “I’ve got a botanist.”

Bambus, who had been hired by the SGC despite a lifetime entanglement with ELF and who spent the first twenty minutes of their meeting staring at John with wide, wide gray eyes—John couldn’t tell from fascination or fear—not unlike the first time John met some of Atlantis’ botanists, who turned out to be veritable cowboys compared to the guys at headquarters.

“Oh, my God,” Rodney sneers. “Who? Parrish? He’s a member of NORML, you know.”

Rodney has to be the only guy who never spent a weekend eating Doritos and watching thinking Spinal Tap was high art in college, John thinks in resignation. It’d be immature to trick Rodney into getting stoned and giving him six boxes of Ho-Hos now, but it doesn’t mean John’s not tempted. “He also has a degree in chemical engineering and has kicked your ass during science relay events two years running,” John points out. “And no, it’s not Parrish.”

“Oh,” Rodney says, odd. Like that doesn’t sit well with him, and John’s about to make a joke about, what, Rodney’s suddenly condoning marijuana advocacy or something? when Rodney adds, “Do you think he’ll—?”

But then John’s Blackberry is buzzing again, whirring against his piles of papers and unfinished business, skidding across his desk with increasing urgency and John can nearly feel General Landry on the other end of the line and he feels tired to his bones all of a sudden.

He says, “Hey, Rodney? Sorry, I don’t mean to be a jerk here but I’ve got a lot to do before they let me out of the mountain tonight and I’m sure you’ve got people to yell at, so I’ll talk to you tomorrow, right?”

“Right, Right,” Rodney agrees, and John realizes he’s still holding the telephone when he hears the click on the other end of the line—Rodney putting down the receiver, that this isn’t a two-way radio. He slams his phone down and snatches up the Blackberry, stalks to the door and hesitates before he snatches the knob and opens it: it’s like, John thinks, seeing the world distorted through aged glass, the same but different, and all wrong to the naked eye. 

*

The meeting with Landry is equal parts humiliating and anti-climactic. It’s hard to come down from a leadership position, even one he didn’t want, and John wants to say, “You realize that’s bullshit scheduling,” and “That’s inefficient use of resources,” but that’s not his place; his new job is to smile pretty and toe the line—at which he has failed peerlessly in the past and will continue to do so in the future, he bets. Earth is rich with things John forgot he had unlimited access to before Pegasus: power, guns, bullets, staples—he wonders if Rodney’s raiding the supply closet in Area 51 the way John wants to say something about how weapons don’t grow on trees. At the SGC, they might as well, and switching off the part of John’s brain that’s constantly calculating, constantly counting, is hard.

Landry’s saying something about starting off with softer missions, until John’s gotten into the rhythm of interplanetary diplomacy in the Milky Way galaxy, and John just bites his tongue and nods “sure,” because he feels like there’s still lead in his bones from the jet and galaxy lag, and he barely has the energy to stay awake.

“M3X-097 isn’t established, per se,” Landry’s telling him, “as a trading partner, but they’re willing. You’re being sent as a goodwill ambassador, basically, and Bambus has been promised to examine some of their agricultural issues.”

John blinks. “Is there a water distribution problem?” he asks, and in the back of his head he’s thinking _desalinization kit, aid, irrigation help_ and _if we trade Marks and Batton for a week to design systems we can get this tonnage of—_ before he can even stop himself, and Landry is telling him: 

“I’m not too clear on that, Colonel—and anyway, it’s mostly a courtesy check; M3X doesn’t have much in the way of agriculture we’re interested in so much as component ore, and first-run geologists already confirmed that.” 

John swallows a protest and nods, and Landry stands up.

“Good,” Landry says. “You leave tomorrow, 0800.”

They do, and they spend most of the three mile trek through the lush rolling forests on M3X-097 trying to keep Bambus from chasing after what Lance Corporal Wallace calls “a freaking mutated rabbit,” and Sergeant Holder chooses to describe simply as “ _fucked up_.” Bambus, though, like most of the scientists John has known and babysat and loved and hated viciously, has tons of excuses and reasons and a digital camera—and all John has is the threat of tying him up and letting the marines carry him to their destination. “Don’t think the extra weight would deter them,” John warns Bambus, who’s giving him that big-eyed look again, “they’re marines, they’d like it.”

Bambus looks at Wallace and Holder, and they grin back, teeth a white, bright crescent on their tanned faces.

“Go for it, princess,” Holder says, and winks. Wallace blows Bambus a kiss.

“See,” John tells Bambus, grabs him by the scruff of his tac vest and starts dragging him forward.

An hour and a mile and a half later they’ve been in and out of the brief and polite diplomatic meeting; Bambus has been dispatched to discuss desalinization and effective field irrigation and John and Holder and Wallace are standing around looking at the massive slave market. There’re people of every skin color and hair color and language, a cacophony of sounds that makes John think about the bird markets in Asia: the brown, unremarkable sparrows and preening exotics, their voice like nails on a chalkboard, and the coquettish parakeets, flirting in mimicked English and Cantonese. Here is the same, the slaves in bamboo-stick cells and branded, beautiful women and men in gilded cages.

“You ever seen anything like this in the Pegasus Galaxy, sir?” Wallace asks, wide-eyed. It’s his third trip through the gate and second time anywhere inhabited; he’s so new John can hear him squeak when he walks.

“Something like this,” John says dispassionately, and thinks of the slave catalog on P6X-001, the photographs and product descriptions, and how Rodney had said, “I think I’m going to be sick,” when they offered gate team one a 20 percent discount on a 13-year-old—since he limped in one leg. But long before Rodney managed to alienate everybody about the slave market, Rodney had gotten them pitched off the planet by alluding to having indulged in premarital sex. “They can’t offer to sell us babies and then get mad for us not saving ourselves for marriage,” Rodney had sputtered, demanding, “I mean—I used a condom! It wasn’t even _good_ premarital sex!”

“This is messed up, sir,” Wallace says, flushing at a gaggle of naked dancers—a dozen of whom giggle and wave as they pass. “I mean—shouldn’t we do something about this?" 

Wrong and right is all one giant, nebulous gray smear, really, and Bambus is down with the Minister of Agriculture tricking them into thinking Earth’s making a commitment to solving their food-supply problems so they can get their hands on rich veins of high-energy ore. Nobody in the slave market—from buyers to sellers to slaves—looks half as miserable as John felt leaving Atlantis, so what the hell is wrong or right, anyway? But Wallace will figure that out eventually, the first time he sees little girls, forced into marriage, or acts of courage and generosity that close up his throat in astonishment—it’s all just gradations.

Holder just smirks, wry and all-knowing, an old hand, and says, “Maybe next time, Wallace.”

John thinks it’s unfair he doesn’t like these guys. If they had been in Atlantis, if they had come to him instead of the other way around, everything would be different.

And that’s when someone approaches them, robes askew and covered in dirt, and asks, “Excuse me—you wouldn’t happen to be Taur’i? Would you?”

Back in the Pegasus Galaxy, people had threatened and kidnapped Rodney plenty—his patented combination of brash jackassery and brilliance proving irresistible. People wanted Rodney to die for his blasphemy, suffer for his arrogance, they wanted him to fix things or make things. And one time, they had wanted Rodney to make dozens of little genius babies, a fate from which Teyla had been compelled to save him only she and Ronon and John were able to peel themselves off of the floor—where they’d fallen, clutching their stomachs laughing. Still, despite a pretty hairy record, John had never been asked to trade his scientist—any scientist—into slavery. 

“Excuse me?” John asks, feeling Bambus’ fingers knot into the back of his tac vest.

The merchant—H’Rong, from Hrung, and it’d taken every iota of professionalism in John’s soul not to ask if anything had collapsed back home—beams, waving over John’s shoulder. “Your slave! The ministers found him terribly delightful.”

“Er,” John says, because this sort of thing has—weirdly—never happened to him before, and he thought he’d run out of opportunities ever to say that again. “I mean, thanks for the offer, but we’d rather not.” H’Rong looks devastated. “The Missus would never forgive me,” John goes on, inventing rapidly. “He’s our favorite.” 

Looking disheartened, H’Rong nodded. “I suppose,” he agreed. “Not even for knowledge of the Orii? We have heard the Taur’i long for such intelligence.” 

“Maybe we could rent him,” Wallace suggests.

“Wallace,” Holder sighs, “shut up.” 

“Thank you, Sergeant,” John tells him, and turns back to H’Rong, who only spares a moment to look hopeful before John says, “Really—we’re flattered you like him so much, but the kids like him so much we couldn’t possibly.” 

“Oh, for—Bambus will you breathe?” Holder says on their hike back to the gate, having missed two check-ins. “We are not selling you.”

“He wanted to _rent me out_ ,” Bambus says, venom in his voice. 

“Please, don’t fake like you don’t like the attention,” Wallace chirps—all fifth grade and fingers itching for pigtails.

John starts a list in his head, thinks that if he ever gets back to Atlantis, he’s taking Wallace and Holder and Bambus with him, for no other reason than the inevitable entertainment value of seeing Cadman threatening to snatch all the hair of out Wallace’s head, and seeing how long it took before the rest of the botanists rolled Bambus around in Pegasus poison oak in one of their cruel and unusual hazing rituals. And Holder, John thinks, because Lorne really, really needs an ally out there. 

*

John recognizes that being freaked out by Safeway is a bad sign.  But he also recognizes that after years of trying to figure out new and non-nauseating ways to cook tava beans, it’s not his fault that he’s frozen, wordless and kind of horrified in the produce aisle.  He has a hand at his ear in a heartbeat, the other fisted tight around the handles of the grocery basket, but he’s not wearing a radio and he’s purposefully left his cell phone in his car.  

This is, John thinks weirdly, with people walking all around him, the most alone he’s been in a very long time.

He ends up buying milk and eggs and bacon and things, stuff he recalls by sheer memory.  John is already through the checkout line with expensive coffee and amaretto creamer before he remembers the only person he knows who drinks coffee with froufy half-and-half is McKay—who calls him halfway through the drive home, after John and thrown the creamer away in a garbage bin outside the grocery store, feeling stupid and useless and reasonlessly hurt. 

“You just can’t lay off the evil aliens, can you?” Rodney snaps.

Sheppard puts the phone between his shoulder and his ear and drags the car across two freeway lanes.  “I missed you, too, McKay,” he says.

“Colonel,” Rodney says, annoyed and sort of high-pitched, “you’d think that once you were out of the targets of the vampire catfish from Pegasus, you’d learn to steer clear of other alien civilizations suffering a serious psychotic break.”

John smiles at that: this is how McKay cares.  It’s sweet, in a psychotic sort of way, and John wondered what Rodney would say about his new apartment, and if he would bite his tongue or blow up completely in true McKay style.  

The SGC relocation specialist had given John a thick packet with apartment rental information and a few poorly-written guides, and John had selected one at random.  It was easy-access to the freeway and near enough to the mountain for emergency late night calls, and the parking lot was lined with laurel trees, their enormous, waxy-green leaves shading the row after row of SUVs.  It was a box, with beige carpet and beige walls, a tiny, poured-cement patio and a view of the swimming pool, where half of Colorado College’s sorority population apparently camped 24 hours a day—their mostly-naked silhouettes backed by the looming spires of an Evangelical megachurch.

“Hey, they found us,” he says honestly.  “They matched our somewhat bland descriptions with those of some rumors apparently floating around those parts of Taur’i interested in finding information about the Orii and bought us a round and offered to trade secrets.”

John figures it’s probably prudent not to mention that he’d suggested the drinking to stave off the pain of not being able to acquire Bambus as a pet, which had eventually lead to drunken admissions—a diplomatic method of which Rodney has been disapproving since it’d resulted in audio files of him singing “Total Eclipse of the Heart” on the Atlantis intranet.

“Oh, and what did they want for them?  A pound of flesh?”

“Actually,” John says with relish, “they wanted the botanist.”

There’s a long silence on the other end of the line, and John imagines the sheer disgust on Rodney’s face.  “You’re kidding,” Rodney says finally.

“Apparently,” John goes on, laughing and trying to remember H’Rong’s drunken rambling, “he is considered a great beauty on that planet and would have sold for a high price at any of the many flourishing slave markets to a family that would treat him well and adorn him with only the finest sterling jewelry and piercing.  I’ve never seen anybody duck behind me that quick before.”

“Not even me?” Rodney asks.

John thinks about Rodney: the weight of his hand on John’s shoulder, along the back of his arm until Rodney’s fingers curled around John’s elbow—thinks about Bambus’ skinny fingers digging into his shoulder, his tac vest.

“You’re not as big a coward as you like to think, McKay,” John tells him.

John doesn’t know the words for what he wants to say, and what he used to be able to translate into a look or a half-hearted punch, sending Rodney chainmail and spam at four in the morning doesn’t work in syllables and consonants.  So he just juggles his cell phone and house key, fumbles at the doorknob instead. 

“Yes, well,” Rodney says, annoyed.  “Hey, where are you living now?”

John tosses the keys on the kitchen counter, watches them slide off and clatter to the floor, and sighs as he sets down the grocery bags and pulls open the freezer door, stuffing chicken fingers and Stouffer’s macaroni and cheese inside.  He remembers being an adult once upon a time, with a shopping list and regular bills, doctor’s appointments and credit cards, and now he can barely wrap his mind around having to buy and put away food.  Everything is harder than he remembers, like functioning in a haze of Novocain—full body detachment and numb, nerveless fingers.

“Apartment out in Colorado Springs,” John tells Rodney, sighing, because he can imagine Rodney firing up Google Maps already, getting a satellite image of John’s building, checking for structural damage.  “There’s an evangelical church in my backyard.”  

“What?” Rodney says, horrified.  “No.”

“What yes,” John says.  “The worst part is the singing.”

John stares at a head of broccoli and wonders if it goes into the crisper—and then he wonders what the hell he’s going to do with broccoli and why he has it.  They were selling three heads for a dollar at the store, and John tore off a produce bag and slipped three heads in, green and nubby florets squeaking under his fingertips.  It’s weird what he knows and doesn’t, how he can recognize a good vegetable sale when he sees one and spent the morning staring helplessly at an automatic sink.

He sticks the broccoli in the fresher.

“It wakes me up every weekend,” he adds.

“You’ve been there two weekends,” Rodney reminds him.

John leaves the bacon out on the counter, since he can’t think of anything else he wants to eat tonight and he doesn’t even have fliers for pizza places yet.   

“It stands to reason,” John tells Rodney, digging two eggs out of the carton before putting them in the fridge on the second shelf, “that those inspired by Jesus to celebrate the Sabbath day with song will continue to celebrate the Sabbath day with really loud song.”

They sing hymns John remembers from Sunday mornings as a kid and hymns they played at Cadet Chapel early mornings, when the sun fractured off of its geometric corners and soaring architecture, broken like fragments of glass.  John doesn’t actually mind the hymns—they fill up the empty rooms of the apartment with voices, and even if John doesn’t believe, he loves that they sing.  

“What do they sing?” Rodney asks.  “Low country spirituals?”

Rodney spent all his time in Colorado either in Boulder or at the mountain, and John can’t help but think that Rodney’s understanding of geography belies his claims of being a genius.  One day, he’s going to show McKay a map of the U.S. and explain what the Mason-Dixon line is, and in which situations stereotypes are allowable. 

“Don’t jinx it, Rodney,” he warns, and he can’t help but smile, because it’s Rodney and this entire conversation is as ridiculous as any they ever had hiking through the back forty of an unknown planet.  Even if space and time and matter can’t seem to stay constant in the context of the Stargate program, it’s nice to know that Rodney—as a collection of these things—can.  John can navigate by it.  “It’s mostly been hymns but now they’re going to start.”

There’s a long pause before Rodney snaps, “Do you even have furniture?”

John thinks about telling Rodney that in his move-in package, they’d included a catalog for IKEA, and a friendly reminder that the SGC had arranged for a generous twenty percent off discount for employees—but Rodney sounds like the kind of angry he’d sounded the last time somebody broke one of John’s fingers, and even John knows better than to joke in the face of Rodney’s protective instincts.   

“I have a chair,” he finally says.  “I have to go buy a couch tomorrow,” he lies.

He’s got a sleeping bag and a guitar and a job he hates and with all the music pouring through his back windows like sun across his beige carpet, there doesn’t seem to be much room for anything else in his life.  John can’t believe that he ever played den mother to a scientific expedition in another galaxy: he can’t handle groceries, he can’t handle highways.  At some point, he’s going to have to get an oil change and new tires and worry about making doctors’ appointments, and the enormity of all the things he needs to do now closes his throat up, and he wonders if this sour sharp panic is what lemons taste like on Rodney’s tongue.

Horrified, Rodney demands, “You don’t have a couch?  What have you been sitting on?” 

“Well, I’ve been doing a lot of standing,” John says, jamming six Lean Cuisines into the freezer.  “And I said I had a chair.”

“God,” Rodney huffs, and John can just imagine his red-faced annoyance here, “prison chic.”

John’s hand freezes on the handle of the refrigerator and he stares out the window over his sink.

“Well,” he manages, scraping it out of his throat, “if the shoe fits.”

Rodney’s quiet on the other end, so John just makes himself say, “I’ve got to go.  I think I forgot to buy milk at the grocery store,” before he hangs up.

There’s a vanity line of trees out back before the soaring, post-modern spires of the megachurch interrupt the blue sky and clouds, block out the sound of distant traffic with the praising of Jesus, and all through the day and night there’s always some music, some noise, some reaching for heaven and stars and something more.  

He thinks that in a weird way he understands Evangelism, the need to tell everybody about Christ and streets paved with gold, to bring everybody there with you—because he wants to tell everybody about Atlantis and a city that rolls beneath your fingers, purrs like a cat under your palm.  But John’s no saint, and he’s jealous with what he has—had, he reminds himself—and if the angels and the Ancients fought for John’s soul, he’d side with the Ancients and bring Rodney with him—Atlantis would feel empty and endless without the sound of Rodney’s complaints, like hymns, echoing off of all the walls.

*

John’s in the middle of explaining to Bambus there is _no way in hell_ they’re going back to MX-How Much For The Botanist? when Rodney’s instant messenger handle pops up:

rodney.mckay (gmail) : My hand-picked minions are a waste of life.  
rodney.mckay (gmail) : I’m tempted to feed them to Michael, but he doesn’t really deserve them.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” John mutters, tugging the keyboard forward to type:

princess.sheppardina (gmail) : what did they do wrong? was the spit shine subpar?

Bambus leans forward over John’s desk, batting his lashes and saying, “But I promise—I have no intentions of permanently joining any of their harems.  I’ve discussed this with some of the anthropologists and they agree that I could bang out some sort of short term deal—” 

“Yeah,” John agrees, glaring at Bambus over his laptop screen, “with ‘bang’ being the operative word here, Dr. Bambus.”

He never had this much trouble convincing Rodney human bondage was a bad idea, and he feels an ache for Teyla and especially for Ronon, who’s probably being forced to thresh or move enormous bags of wheat right now.

princess.sheppardina (gmail) : and anyway, i’m having my own personnel issues right now

Bambus makes an aggrieved face and says, “There’s no reason to be so prudish about sex, you know.”

“You say that now,” John tells him, annoyed.  “But who do you think Landry’s going to roast over a spit when you come back pregnant and bitter about it?”  Bambus gives him a sour look.  “That’s right—me.  The answer is no.”

But that doesn’t seem to dissuade Bambus entirely, who spends some time leaning over John’s desk too-curiously to stare at his computer screen, and at Rodney’s brand new screed:

rodney.mckay (gmail) : Personnel issues?  What kind of personnel issues?  Is this something I need to be concerned about?  
rodney.mckay (gmail) : Okay, I just looked up your team – wow, what losers.  
rodney.mckay (gmail) : I can’t believe you give me crap about my lab rats. 

Bambus is trying to be discrete about it, but John can see the way his eyes widen just a fraction in annoyance, and he swallows back a laugh to type in:

princess.sheppardina (gmail) : still better than yours  
princess.sheppardina (gmail) : one of them even reminds me of you  
princess.sheppardina (gmail) : loud, demanding, has no ninja skills  
princess.sheppardina (gmail) : yes, i’m talking about you, bambus.   
princess.sheppardina (gmail) : stop looking at my laptop screen

Pulling back, Bambus gives him a raised brow.  “Your screenname is _Princess Sheppardina_?” he asks.

“Once upon a time, I thought I could be a ballerina,” John says easily.   

The scuttlebutt around the mountain has made it abundantly clear what people think of him, and John’s past being concerned about his reputation—what tiny pieces of it might be twisting in the wind.  There’d be innuendo and plenty of gay beefcake pictures stuffed into his locker at McMurdo, after the bitter and bored marine contingent there had found out about the pretty boy new zoomie, and he’d spent most of his firstie year at the academy fielding—and turning down—awkward come ons.  And here, in the mountain, where he’s been busted back to middle management, he’s gotten  his share of ugly looks and rumors; he knows if McKay ever knew he’d have an aneurysm on the spot, but John doesn’t really care.  The truth of the matter is irrelevant anyway, now—he knows too many secrets.

Bambus grins at him, genuinely fond.  “You know,” he says, “you’re not so bad.” 

“Even if I won’t let you become a kept botanist?” John asks, leaning back in his chair and smirking.

“Even if,” Bambus allows, and heads toward his office door before he pauses and says, shy, “I know we’re not your first choice, but we’re good guys.”

John feels a rush of shame at that.  He hasn’t been anybody’s first choice in so long that the resigned discomfort of it is natural, like breathing in and out—but Bambus, for his inability to walk and chew gum, is a good scientist, and Wallace and Holder are excellent marines.  They’re green, they’re new to the program, and they deserve better in John’s hands.  

“I know that,” John tells Bambus, honest.  “Just let me know when I’m being an ass.”  


“Will do,” Bambus says, leaving with a smile.  “And I’ll just assume you get it from Dr. McKay.”

Since John has looked away from his laptop screen, Rodney’s written a small thesis, filled with threats of violence and offers to have some of the “friends” he’d made in Russia come straighten out John’s new team.  It’s loaded down with exclamation points and CAPITAL LETTERS and _heavy use of italics_ when all else had failed.  John just smiles, rueful, and cracks his knuckles, turning back to his AAR and closing down the chat client.

John doesn’t get around to feeling sort of bad about it until later, but since he does, before their next mission, he lets Rodney go on for more than an hour about how he hates, hates, hates all of his employees and how they should be shot with a gun that John taught Rodney how to fire. 

“I’m reasonably certain that’s frowned upon,” John tells him, putting the phone between his ear and his shoulder to reach toward his keyboard.  He’s email’s lighting up: _ding ding ding_ , and he sees General Landry’s okayed their next mission—still a softball, but one with potential.  “Hey, can we continue this on gtalk?  I gotta make a call about—” he says over the line.

Rodney’s hung up before John can finish his sentence, typing:

rodney.mckay (gmail) : They're all whores.

John laughs, too loud in the too quiet of his office, but his door is shut and he has a handwritten sign up reading LEAVE ME ALONE BAMBUS, HOLDER, WALLACE – I WILL TELL YOU ABOUT OUR NEXT OFFWORLD MISSION WHEN I KNOW ABOUT OUR NEXT OFFWORLD MISSION.  

princess.sheppardina (gmail) : that's not very nice, rodney.  
rodney.mckay (gmail) : Well, it's true!  
princess.sheppardina (gmail) : maybe you should do some teambuilding activities.

Picking up the phone, he dials the five digit extension into Bambus’ lab—for reasons he wants to know nothing about, Wallace has been hanging around in botany six, where Bambus grows things that remind John very strongly of weed, and make him deeply suspicious.  And when Bambus picks up, John says, “Hey—go get Wallace and Holder and meet me in my office in five—we’ve got another mission and we should do some prep.”

“Like, shooting guns prep?” Bambus asks, obviously excited. 

“No, like how not to fall down in rough terrain prep,” John quips.  He doesn’t actually know if there’s a way to teach that, or if Bambus is just honor-bound to look battered all the time.

“Excellent,” Bambus says.  “We’ll be there in five,” he adds, and hangs up.

The last time John called Rodney in for mission prep, he’d been treated to a fifteen minute whine about how nobody in biology respected him for his genius and just because he wasn’t completely fluent in the nature of mitochondrial energy production and they were didn’t mean that their “science” wasn’t any less of a joke.  Rodney had bitched all through walking to a transporter, complained while being demolecularized, and defamed members of the expedition all while walking into the marines’ ready room, concluding with, “And anyway, that’s when Gene threw a beaker of something over me and told me it was Ebola, so I just wanted to say we have to push the trip back a few days in case I actually have an organ-liquefying viral contagion.” 

John had rolled his eyes, reaching over to tap off Rodney’s comm, because hearing the guy complain in stereo was weird.  “You do not have Ebola,” he said, and wondered how his many years of tactical training and flight school had come to this moment.

“I might,” Rodney had persisted.  “And won’t you be sorry if I do and I _die_ off world?”

“Rodney, if you die of Ebola, me and Teyla and Ronon will all have died of Ebola, too,” John points out.  “None of us will be around to be sorry.”

John doesn’t know McKay got under his skin, but he’s there—the way Atlantis is, thrumming and constantly begging for attention.  He misses the walls and how they seemed to curve more sweetly beneath his palms, how the floor lit up under his feet, leading his way, how he’d found the conservatory, and listened to ethereal alien music for hours, slumped against a wall, helpless against the acoustics, feeling like he was being lifted out of his head.  Atlantis had been a Garden of Eden for John—a feast of delights and too many temptations, and too quickly taken away.

He misses Elizabeth, who’s still heartbroken and AWOL, disappeared; Carson, who he sees sometimes in the hallway, but seems a million miles away, lost in an ocean of sprained wrists and research papers.  He misses—God strike him down—Lorne, who’s not around to write his AARs anymore.  He even misses Chuck, because Chuck always had the best gossip.

But mostly John spends his time missing his city, missing his team.  He misses Ronon, who had made John think that having a little brother might not have sucked as badly as he’d sworn it would be during the I Don’t Want A Baby Brother Or Sister Campaign of third grade.  He misses Teyla, so much his skin hurts, and how their silences spoke to each other in a language of sighs; she’s the only woman since his mother who’s ever held his hand to take him somewhere, to give him things, and he loves her in a complicated way that he doesn’t have words for, but that hurts still like the ache of a phantom limb.

He misses Rodney, who makes it worse by missing John enough that it feels too intimate even over a phone line, through the internet, in 12-point Arial font on a computer screen.

rodney.mckay (gmail) : They won't even fight with me. They think I'm badass.  
princess.sheppardina (gmail) : ok this is serious.  
rodney.mckay (gmail) : I hate you so much I don't even have words.

John smirks, and hears footsteps coming down the hall, so he types:

princess.sheppardina (gmail) : i figured that one out from the messenger handle you made me.  
princess.sheppardina (gmail) : i'm going offworld for the next two weeks, just a heads up.  
princess.sheppardina (gmail) : ok, heading out. don't forget: teambuilding. 

Before he signs offline just as the door to his office opens, Wallace holding up the yellow legal paper sign with an aggrieved look.

“I only called you twice,” he complains.

“You only called me twice _yesterday,_ ” John clarifies, and Holder rolls his eyes, muttering, “Oh for Jesus sake,” even as Bambus dashes for the nicest of the guest chairs, still vibrating with glee as he says, “ _Anyway_.  What’s our next mission?  Is it dangerous?  Will it be exciting?”

“Can we sell Harry into sex slavery again?” Wallace pipes up.

Holder asks, “Can I shoot Wallace?”

John points at each of them in turn, saying first to Bambus, “M6X-008, scientific mission for plant-based antibiotics; hopefully not, on both counts,” then turning to Wallace to scowl as he snaps, “ _No_ ,” and lastly, to Holder, who is clearly a man after John’s heart, “Fire at will, marine.”

* 

M6X-008 is a planet roughly a quarter of the size of Earth with exactly three natural resources: water, smarts, and high reproductive rates.  It’s a tiny, blighted hole of a planet but technology has kept it lush, green, irrigated—they trade with dozens of other planets, and barter with custom-made chemicals.  Gate travelers are old hat for them, and a trade representative meets them and takes them on a winding, ambulating PR-friendly tour of the facilities.  They are told repeatedly, over and over again, not to touch anything, which is probably why Harry and Wallace end up messing with something or another that results in a chemical spill that leads to a chemical fire, which is the last thing John remembers clearly before waking up in the SGC infirmary, Carson peering down at him with a wronged expression.

“I’m in hell, aren’t I?” John can’t resist saying.

Carson scowls.  “Funny, Colonel,” he says.  “Rodney’s already heard.”

“Fuck,” John says.

“Apparently, he’s also sent them a _memo_ ,” Carson goes on, gleeful.  

John can tell from the manic smile on Carson’s face that the memo is probably closer to a manifesto, likely involved a lot of threats of violence, and was probably horribly embarrassing.  He can also tell he’s sicker than Carson wants to let on, if instead of a stern lecture about safety protocols and not taking care of himself in the field, it’s teasing first.  He sees nurses hovering at the corners of the room, and hiding in the shadows is Bambus, Wallace, and Holder, all of them looking shamefaced and smoke-streaked, standing ramrod straight.  

He debates, for a minute, yelling at them in frustration, about channeling his drill instructor from basic and letting loose a stream of profanity worthy of the most neanderthal of jarheads on Atlantis, but he’s tired and still-dizzy and he gets the feeling there’s nothing he could say Carson hasn’t done for him, either out of fraternal concern or as a proxy for McKay.

And anyway, John’s sick to death of being angry at them.  Nobody will ever be McKay and Teyla and Ronon and it isn’t worth the stress on his throat to shout about it anymore.  Even if those are never the words that come out, it’s always the thought just at the tip of his tongue: Why aren’t you Teyla?  Where is Ronon?  Why the fuck can’t you be _McKay?_   John feels like he’s missing three limbs, that he’s paralyzed and floating through nightmares, or maybe that’s just whatever Carson’s pumping into his IV drip, now, a look of shared sorrow on his face.

“Go on now,” Carson hushes.  “Go back to sleep.  Don’t worry: I won’t tell Rodney.”

Apparently he keeps his promise, because Rodney manages to stay in New Mexico and John stays in Colorado.  John’s worried, initially, that Sam might rat him out, tattle to Rodney or let it slip by accident he’s still on three hours of oxygen a day and that he’s got an ugly burn on his back or that he’s been restricted to on-base activity for the near-term, but she only brings him a bag of Twizzlers and smirks.

“You can stop looking like I’m about to go charter McKay a military transport to come here and yell at you and poison your team, Sheppard,” Carter tells him.  “I don’t need the migraines, either.”

It’s a sentiment the entire base shares, and everybody on the medical and science teams are assiduously careful around him.  That’s nothing compared to his team, who come to him with apologies and combined promises this sort of thing will never happen again.  John knows better than to sigh and say, “Yeah, it will,” since it’s discouraging and they’ll find out sooner or later anyway, so he lets them bring him tea in the mess hall and ask after him and offer to drive him back to his mostly-empty apartment.  Behind the veneer of polite concern is the haunted look of someone who’s seen the face of chemical death in the wrath of McKay, PhD.  “Well, you know,” they say, shifty-eyed, when he asks.  “Dr. McKay was just concerned.”

“Yeah, sure he was,” John mutters, and Bambus, breaking line, manage to blurt out, “I think he knows where I _live!_ ” before Wallace kicks him viciously in the shin.  John thinks maybe they’ll work out as a team after all, which doesn’t prevent him from complaining, later:

princess.sheppardina (gmail) : thanks a lot, mckay. now they think you're my girlfriend.


End file.
